However, I kinda got lazy until I logged on Twitter today and saw the SBS TV show 4 Corners trending. 4 Corners has always been known to document on some really controversial topics known in Australia's culture, one popular one being about the disgusting animal abattoirs the Australian industry had in south-east Asia. Tonight, it happens to be about the thing I wanted to write about last week: Australia's educational system.
When we first migrated here in Australia 9 years ago, I enrolled school the following week. I can still recall it. We arrived on a Saturday, 17 May. The following Monday on the 19th, my parents enrolled my sister and I to Crawford Public School. We were already in the classroom by the next day, and I was in Year 4. Yet after only a week of attending an Australian school for the first time, I noticed something really different about school that was a lot more than the expected culture shock people would get from the migration process. The entire year I started getting really really bored of school and I started not wanting to go. We were learning our times tables, learning how to spell words like 'mumble', we barely had homework and all we did on our spare time in class was watch movies like Shrek. I already knew long division by then!
Throughout primary school, I felt like school wasn't really school. We were just mostly playing around, and recess went on forever. I wasn't learning much and my mind wasn't too stimulated either. I wasn't learning anything new because the stuff we were just learning in Year 4, I'd already done in Grade 1 in the Philippines. Even at kindergarten, kids already had homework everyday from every subject (they weren't terribly difficult though from what I can recall and looking back, I actually think they were right just for our age), teachers focused more on the basics of education like English (English was more focused on proper grammar and use of the language rather than reading books and watching movies then analysing them back in the Philippines), Maths and Science and we actually had exams at the end of each term. Now that I'm a lot more used to the Australian culture, having exams for each subject at the end of each term does sound pretty harsh, but that was the kind of thing that got me 99 or 100 in every exam back then.
Not than I've never gotten a 100 in an Australian school exam before. But it was a rare occasion unlike back then. Anyway, to put a stop to my life-story retelling, the point is that as soon as I heard about the government finally taking notice of what's really up with Australia's education system, I was seriously thinking in my head 'What the f**k took you so long?!' It's been pretty much ten years since I first pondered about the same topic.
But in a way I was glad that they finally got it so in the future, they can solve problems as to why our school children had practically gone lazier and lazier. I honestly think that Australian students are lazy. They bum around from kindergarten to about Year 10. After Year 10, they've pretty much learnt nothing worth bringing to the future to the point that many Aussie students go 'Wtf I'm just gonna drop out of school. School's useless if I just wanna get a paying job'. I still know a lot of people who have that attitude. If you're really lucky, you can get really rich if you just drop out of Year 10 then that's it, but most people who don't finish school or continue to post-school studying either end up in retail or in food outlets. Seriously.
The other students, however, who continue to their senior high school years, find it really hard to quickly adjust to the stress and the hard work and diligence required in Year 11 and 12, where everything starts to matter. Because they didn't get enough of that discipline and practice in the previous school years. To be honest, even I suffered this. But with having enough courage to get out of my comfort zone and continual prayer to God that He'll give me the strength for the next two years, I made it eventually.
Anyway, in regards to the 4 Corners segment, I really liked how well they've analysed why Australia's education is behind our neighbours. They basically talked about the school fundings are being spent on the wrong things, like more laptops, smart boards and new buildings instead of improving the actual education and how the kids are learning. I seriously agree 100%. Personally, I'm against school laptops and I think the old-fashioned exercise books are better. I mean, the kids could be playing games on there and the teacher won't know. Even if they stop them, they'll continue, they won't do schoolwork and they can easily hide it from the teachers. If the teacher takes away the laptop, they can't do schoolwork. With notebooks, they've got no choice. They either have to write the work down or not.
Anyway. Babbling again. My famous last words is like 'What took you so long?' By the way, the first school, Toronto High, they showed in the 4 Corners video looks like Doonside Tech, I actually thought it was them! SO FUNNY.
(However. I also think the Filipino school system isn't perfect. Like many Asian countries, they emphasise way too much on rote learning and memorisation. When you do learn here, I like how Australian schools teach you how to understand the work instead of just memorising it.)
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